Question

Difficulty: EasyZero Trust Architecture Principles

Match each core Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) control plane component with its primary operational responsibility in accordance with NIST SP 800-207 standards.

  • Policy Engine (PE)Evaluates access requests against enterprise policies to issue the ultimate decision to grant, deny, or revoke access.
  • Policy Administrator (PA)Communicates with the enforcement point to issue commands that establish or terminate the control path and session connection.
  • Policy Enforcement Point (PEP)Gates, monitors, and terminates active data connections between subjects and enterprise resources based on governance decisions.

Answer

Policy Engine pairs with evaluating access requests and making decision choices; Policy Administrator pairs with issuing control commands to manage sessions; Policy Enforcement Point pairs with gating and monitoring active connections in the data path.
Each Zero Trust Architecture component fulfills a distinct logical role specified in NIST SP 800-207: the Policy Engine acts as the decision maker, the Policy Administrator serves as the controller executing control plane commands, and the Policy Enforcement Point directly controls connection flows in the data plane.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the primary function of the Policy Engine.
Recognize that the Policy Engine is responsible for the trust decision logic.
It processes subject, resource, and environment attributes against security rules to evaluate access authorization.
2
Identify the primary function of the Policy Administrator.
Recognize that the Policy Administrator translates policy decisions into control signals.
It instructs the Policy Enforcement Point to open or close the specific session path.
3
Identify the primary function of the Policy Enforcement Point.
Recognize that the Policy Enforcement Point sits on the data plane.
It directly intercepts, enables, monitors, and terminates network connections between subjects and targets.

Key Concept

Zero Trust Architecture Control and Data Plane Components
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